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the everyman memoirs

Should've Been a Cowboy

Friday, 19 April 2013

Tom's first book, The Secret Life of Cowboys, is one of my favorite memoirs, and I honestly don't know why it took me so long to read One Good Horse, but I loved it as well. Maybe not quite as much as Cowboys, but there is something about the way he writes that I resonate with. The simple sentence construction, Tom's calm nature as he moves through life, I really feel like I'm on the ranch myself as I read. More than that, reading these books makes me WANT to be on the ranch.

I also appreciate the honestly with which he writes. Cowboys is all about his dream of owning a ranch, how he gets there, and how he ultimately realizes it might not be for him after all. To spend so much of your life working for something, it takes a lot to tell the world "nevermind." And in Horse, he takes on the training of a colt, unabashedly second-guessing himself the whole way. It's not that his books are downers, it's that I feel what he feels while I read, and sometimes that honesty, even when painful, is refreshing. Honestly, I feel like I've just returned from Montana. And I already want to go back.